That was the signal that Guild, 't is said,
Gave to his wife at Providence,

As through the sleeping town, and thence,
Out in the night,

On to the light,

Down past the farms, lying white, he sped!

As a husband's greeting, scant no doubt,
Yet to the woman looking out,

Watching and waiting, no serenade,
Love song, or midnight roundelay,
Said what that whistle seemed to say:
"To my trust true,

So love to you!

Working or waiting, good-night!" it said.

Brisk young bagmen, tourists fine,
Old commuters along the line,

Brakemen and porters glanced ahead,

Smiled as the signal, sharp, intense,

Pierced through the shadows of Providence"Nothing amiss,

Nothing! it is

Only Guild calling his wife," they said.

Summer and winter, the old refrain

Rang o'er the billows of ripening grain,

Pierced through the budding boughs o'erhead, Flew down the track when the red leaves burned Like living coals from the engine spurned: Sang as it flew :

"To our trust true.

First of all Duty-good-night," it said.

And then, one night, it was heard no more,
From Stonington over Rhode Island shore,

And the folk in Providence smiled and said,
As they turned in their beds, "The engineer
Has once forgotten his midnight cheer."
One only knew

To his trust true

Guild lay under his engine, dead.

Bret Harte.

BERNARDO DEL CARPIO.

I.

THE warrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart

of fire,

And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned

sire:

"I bring thee here my fortress keys, I bring my captive

train,

I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord! O, break my father's chain!"

II.

"Rise! rise! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man this day!

Mount thy good horse; and thou and I will meet him on his way."

Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his

steed,

And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger's foamy speed.

III.

And, lo, from far, as on they pressed, there came a glittering band,

With one that midst them stately rode, as a leader in the land:

"Now haste, Bernardo, haste! for there, in very truth, is he,

The father whom thy faithful heart hath yearned so long

to see.

IV.

His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went;

He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismounting, bent;

A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took,— What was there in its touch that all his fiery spirit shook?

That hand was cold,his like lead!

V.

a frozen thing, it dropped from

He looked up to the face above, the face was of the dead!

A plume waved o'er the noble brow, -the brow was fixed and white;

He met, at last, his father's eyes, — but in them was no sight!

VI.

Up from the ground he sprang and gazed; but who could paint that gaze?

They hushed their very hearts that saw its horror and

amaze:

They might have chained him, as before that stony form

he stood;

For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood.

VII.

"Father!" at length he murmured low, and wept like childhood then :

Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men!

He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young

renown;

He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down.

VIII.

Then covering, with his steel-gloved hands, his darkly mournful brow,

"No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the sword

for now;

My king is false, my hope betrayed! My father, -O the worth,

The glory and the loveliness are passed away from earth!

IX.

"I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside

thee yet;

I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met!

Thou wouldst have known my spirit, then; for thee my

fields were won;

And thou hast perished in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son!"

X.

Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein,

Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier

train;

And with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing warhorse led,

And sternly set them face to face, -the king before the dead:

XI.

"Came I not forth, upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss?

Be still, and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me what is this?

The voice, the glance, the heart I sought, — give answer,

where are they?

If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay;

22. *

R

XII.

"Into these glassy eyes put light; be still! keep down thine ire!

Bid these white lips a blessing speak, - this earth is not my sire:

Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed.

Thou canst not?—and a king! —his dust be mountains on thy head!"

XIII.

He loosed the steed, his slack hand fell; upon the silent

face

He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place.

His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain!

His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain.

Felicia Hemans.

THE HEROISM OF THE PILGRIMS.

If one were called upon to select the most glittering of the instances of military heroism to which the admiration of the world has been most constantly attracted, he would make choice, I imagine, of the instance of that desperate valor, in which, in obedience to the laws, Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans cast themselves headlong, at the passes of Greece, on the myriads of their Persian invaders. From the simple page of Herodotus, longer than from the Amphictyonic monument, or the games of the commemoration, that act speaks still to the tears and praise of all the world.

Judge if, that night, as they watched the dawn of the last morning their eyes could ever see; as they heard with